No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 September 2022
In the prologue, two Grusinian kolkhozes determine the ownership of a valley to which they both claim to have a right. It goes to those who administer it best: those who irrigate it so that it can bear fruit. Members of two kolkhoz villages assemble in a valley in the Caucasian mountains. They contemplate the rubble of a destroyed village. With them is an expert from the capital under whose direction a discussion takes place. The farmers stand and sit in groups—separated according to their kolkhozes—to the right and the left of the expert. They drink wine and smoke. Later the famous singer Arkadi Tsheidse is summoned.
1 Earlier, Galinsk had been Brecht's name for the fruit-growing kolkhoz, Rosa Luxemburg for the goat raisers. He switched this around in the final text, along with the stage directions as to who is left and who is right.—Trans.
2 Not a parable but, as already indicated in the note on the prologue, a Gleichnis, translated above as “mirror image.” Nevertheless, Brecht had once thought otherwise, for he asked Eric Bentley to use the title Parables for the Theatre for a volume including this play. Nor has his later attempt to build a more systematic terminology found favor. Ernst Shumacher, the Marxist critic, writes: “Brecht's claim that [The Caucasian Chalk Circle] is not a parable does not convince.” (Drama und Geschichte, Bertolt Brechts Leben des Galilei, p. 459.)—Trans
3 The music of the Berliner Ensemble production is by Paul Dessau. Much of it is on tape and has been broadcast by Pacifica Radio in the United States. Eric Bentley has written English lyrics into a copy of the full score sent him by the composer: it has not yet (1967) been used in any American production.—Trans.
4 Kulisiewicz's seventy-two drawings were published in 1956 (Henschelverlag, Berlin) under the title Zeichnungen zur Inszenierung des Berliner Ensembles. Bertolt Brecht: Der kaukasische Kreidekreis. They have been reproduced here by the kind permission of the publishers.—Trans.